


We All Need to Move on.

by meadoe



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meadoe/pseuds/meadoe
Summary: "What would you do if I had died?"//How were either of them still alive?
Relationships: Levi/Hange Zoë
Comments: 2
Kudos: 61





	We All Need to Move on.

Hange doesn't know how long she had been sitting there by Levi's mangled body. It could have been hours, days, years....but time didn't seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter. But of course things actually did matter; she was lying to herself. Again and again. With her face buried in her hands and every inch of her body trembling, begging for sobs that she was refusing to let out, she was beginning to wonder why they couldn't just catch a single break. She wonders why out of all the comrades and friends she had made in the survey corps she was one of the very few left to live. And for the first time in her life she wants to run away. She wants to hide and pretend. That. Nothing. Fucking. Mattered.

A cough startles her out of her own pity party and if she wasn't used to battles and adrenaline it probably would have made her jump. Levi stirs next to her, waking up for the probably third time since he had regained consciousness. She immediately leans over to push him back down but he doesn't budge. He continues to sit there, looking at her in silence. Something unsettling sits in the hot, humid air.

"I-I'll...it's time to check your condition." Hange laughs to herself, but it's more of a hidden cry of desperation. She reaches up to his face and slowly begins to unwrap the bandages that cover half his body. She tries her best not to touch the wound, touching Levi's chin with the slightest of pressure (hopefully he won't complain about how dirty her hands are because goddamn she was trying to save his life over here) and lifts up his face ever so gently to get a good look at her stitch work. Everything was still in place. Nothing ripped. Regardless, she still pulls out what little medical supplies that are left and begins to rub a cotton ball with alcohol against his face. It stings. She can tell by the way the man in front of her clenches slightly. 

"Why are we still here?" Levi's voice is scratchy from hours of sleeping. "We need to get to those brats."

Hange sighs as she reaches for the gauze. "You need to rest."

She starts to re-wrap his wounds and holds her breath as she layers it around his torso, hoping Levi doesn't notice how her hands move slower when she's brushing them against his skin. 

Levi has been on edge even more so than usual since he had awoken. Despite being in a barely functional state, he was still grumbling and insisting that Hange needs to get a move on and that he's fine and he can take care of his own wounds, how he doesn't need a damn doctor and his health was the least of their worries. And she knows he's about to say something of the sort as he opens his mouth before Hange starts to wrap over the stitches on his face, but she deflects and interrupts him.

"Stop being so stubborn. You can't get to those _'brats'_ if your stitches come undone and that means you need to relax and let me do all the work. They can take care of themselves until we catch up. I'm sure of it."

Tension spreads between the both of them. "What would you do if I had died?"

It takes Hange a second to process the question. In fact, she isn't really sure if she can actually process the question. She tries to think. She tries to imagine that "what if" his corpse had been cold and hardened in her arms by the time she had reached him. Her reaction to his state was already so raw, so distressed. What would she have done? She doesn't answer until his head is tightly wrapped up. If it were any other situation she would laugh and tell him that he looks like a mummy. 

"I don't know." 

She sets both of her hands on his shoulders and pushes him back down to lay. "What would you do if I died?"

Levi stays silent long enough that she starts to begin wondering if he's fallen asleep before he mumbles an answer. It's quiet, a whisper. And almost immediately Levi is passed out from the exhaustion from sitting up for even a couple minutes; so she starts to wonder if she actually heard the words or imagined it. But from Levi's mouth the words still came out clear and true. In his grumpy, weakened state he gave the same reply. "I don't know."

A sharp tight pain inflames Hange's chest, a feeling of pain crumbling her core, and it's almost too painful to breath. She knows was sorrow is. She's had so many losses. She has sat flowers by so many graves. This was just a different kind of pain. The type that keeps her building an imaginary barrier between the two of them. Because it would be too much to feel his hands in hers, their lips crushed together, and their bodies intertwined if it had been taken away and never given back. 

She knows Levi feels the same.

But regardless of all the feelings they've forced down into the darkest part of their hearts, she isn't quite sure if holding back would change a damn thing. And in a moment of impulse, she slides her fingers slowly through Levi's dark, short hair. It makes his face look a little more peaceful even if it's only in sleep. She'll take it. She wants to take and give everything to him.

Because neither of them know what one would do without the other. 

And it's scary because right now everyone is dying - being smashed under piles or rock or a bullet through their heads - and she just wants to close her eyes and make it not matter. It shouldn't fucking matter. She wishes she could sit in the forest forever. Just the two of them.

But it will always matter.

The world is too fucking cruel to give them a chance.


End file.
